About Us

The Rockford College Music Academy is a not-for-profit community school of music dedicated to providing high quality, affordable instruction, and performance opportunities to academy students, regardless of age or ability.

It is the mission of the Rockford College Music Academy to inspire in students a life-long love of music and the arts.

Rockford College Music Academy is a member of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. As a Guild school, we believe the arts are fundamental. We believe excellent instruction and expert individual education in the arts continues to be an important and vital factor in the welfare of all people. We believe the arts give meaning and wholeness to all human existence, extending from the life of the individual to the community and ultimately to our entire civilization. Thus, it must follow the pursuit of the arts is the rightful heritage of every individual and not the privilege of the gifted few.

Therefore, in this as in every other sphere of human activity, the highest quality of artistic endeavor must be made accessible to all interested persons.

Like Jane Addams, founder of the Hull House Community School of Music, we seek

“to give thorough musical instruction to those children showing the greatest aptitude and to foster in a much larger group the cultural aspects of a musical education.”

Jane Addams
Rockford College, Class of 1882
Nobel Peace Prize, 1931

Music Academy students performing at the Jane Addams Memorial Park in Chicago in 1996.

Links

National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts - an organization with 305 member schools, including the Music Academy.

The Mendelssohn Club - the oldest community music organization in continuing existence in the US, is located in Rockford, Illinois.